1993: A Year Like No Other There Were Tragedies, Tears And Occasionally A Triumph

December 26, 1993|by BOB WITTMAN, The Morning Call

It was a year like all others, although it is hard to imagine another year quite like it.

There were murders and political upsets. Companies failed, and storms blew through. Just like all the other years. But there was something about 1993 that made it quite unlike any that have come before.

Nineteen-ninety-three will be remembered as the year the Lehigh Valley would claim its first accused serial killer -- 19-year-old Harvey Robinson of Allentown, who was charged on his birthday with murdering three women and trying to kill two others.

But 1993 may just as likely be remembered as the year of Pumsy the puppet. The little green dragon that taught self-esteem to elementary school children received lots of attention early in the year when Saucon Valley school board member Robert Osmun said it brainwashed pupils. He succeeded in forcing the puppet's retirement.

The year was quirky and wacky and scary and tawdry. And dangerous.

Doylestown attorney William H. Eastburn III was shot in the chest by a former client suffering from mental illness. Auckland's Farm Market owner John Rumsey, a director of the Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra, was murdered by a homeless man suffering from mental illness.

John B. Mayer, a homeless Allentown man with a long history of mental illness and two weapons convictions, opened fire with an assault rifle upon the crowded parking lot of the Zodiac Club in Allentown. Five people were wounded.

Stephen Ficula of Peapack, N.J., made a late-night ride through the Lehigh Valley on the way to a car show in Carlisle and stopped long enough at the home of an elderly Bethel couple he did not know to kill the woman, beat the man and trash their house -- for apparently no reason.

Jessica Lynn Strohl of South Whitehall Township was accused of setting her ex-lover's Wescosville mobile home on fire while everyone inside slept. Toby Romig escaped, but Lisa Farkas and her 1-year-old son died.

Diane Fehnel was stabbed to death by her husband, William, after she returned for her belongings to the Wescosville mobile home she shared with him until last summer, when she could no longer stand his physical abuse and threats.

The madness knew no bounds. Like never before, young people took up arms -- and took aim.

Fifteen-year-old Jason Michael Smith murdered classmate Michael Patrick Swann in front of 22 students during their Upper Perkiomen High School biology lesson. After the shooting, Smith walked from the school and sat beneath a tree until police arrested him. Smith said he was tired of Swann's bullying.

Seventeen-year-old Vandon Tricamo of Hegins Township, Schuylkill County, was charged with shotgunning to death his mother, Kare L. Seidel, his 15-year-old buddy, Daniel Rothermel, and wounding his mother's friend, Marsha Ann Lux, inside Seidel's mobil home. He told investigators he was upset because the three were having sex.

Guns of all kinds were confiscated from students' lockers and book bags, passed around for inspection on school playgrounds and came to the authority's attention when they slipped from hands and skidded down the aisles of moving school buses.

When eight-grader Dennison Williams was confronted by a guidance counselor at Bangor Junior High about a gun he was reported to be carrying, he pulled it from his pocket and shot himself in the jaw.

And then there was Harvey Miguel Robinson, a former Dieruff High School student, who was arrested July 31 after a series of break-ins, a rape and an attempted homicide at an E. Highland Street address.

Soon, the rumor spread that Robinson was also a suspect in the June slaying of a Morning Call carrier, Dieruff freshman Charlotte Schmoyer. But for weeks, investigators would confirm nothing.

Then, on Dec. 6, police said DNA fingerprinting linked Robinson to not only the Schmoyer killing but to the rape and murder of 47-year-old Jessica Fortney in July, the rape and murder of 29-year-old Joan Mary Burghardt the summer before and the rape and attempted murder of a 5-year-old girl in her N. Maxwell Street home in June.

"You think it can't happen in your community," said Mayor Joseph S. Daddona at a press conference on the day the charges were filed. "This shows it can."

It wasn't all gunfire and gore.

Slatington resident Joe Jones Jr. won $20.8 million -- that's $715,364 a year for 21 years -- with a lucky Pennsylvania Lottery ticket he failed to check for almost a year until it was two days away from expiring.

Another winner was Lehigh County Commissioner Jane Baker, who whupped incumbent County Executive David K. Bausch in the Republican primary and triumphed over Democratic challenger Daniel Dougherty in the general election to become the second female county executive in Pennsylvania.

At least her win was anticipated.

Republican Bill Brackbill's upset of Democratic incumbent Gerald E. Seyfried for election to Northampton County executive wasn't. Some said Seyfried's defeat was electoral punishment for his firing of popular Sheriff Alfred Diomedo.